Missing Ive League Student Sunil Tripathi and Boston Events

Update III: And a body found in Providence Harbor has been identified as Sunil Tripathi. Just tragic.

Update II: A message from Sunil's family:

A tremendous and painful amount of attention has been cast on our beloved Sunil Tripathi in the past twelve hours.

We have known unequivocally all along that neither individual suspected as responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings was Sunil.

We are grateful to all of you who have followed us on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit—supporting us over the recent hours.

Now more than ever our greatest strength comes from your enduring support. We thank all of you who have reached out to our family and ask that you continue to raise awareness and to help us find our gentle, loving, and thoughtful Sunil. 

Kermit Gosnell is to Abortion as Cecil B. Jacobson is to Fertility Treatments

Abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell - who is accused of truly horrific crimes allegedly committed at his abortion clinic - is on trial:

(CBS/AP) PHILADELPHIA - An unlicensed doctor fled out the back of an unorthodox medical clinic the night the FBI raided the facility in 2010, a witness testified Thursday at a murder trial centered on the location.

Abortion provider Kermit Gosnell, 72, is charged with killing a 41-year-old female patient and seven babies allegedly born alive, and with performing illegal, late-term abortions at his thriving inner-city clinic. Co-defendant Eileen O'Neill, 56, of Phoenixville, is charged with billing as a doctor and participating in a corrupt organization.

Eight former employees have pleaded guilty, some to third-degree murder, and have testified this month about bizarre, often-chaotic practices at the clinic.

The Kermit Gosnell story is almost too ugly for words, and it is, not surprisingly, being used by anti-abortion forces as an argument against abortion. But it is not about the rightness or wrongness of abortion - it is about Kermit Gosnell.

Just like Cecil B. Jacobson's story is not about the rightness or wrongess of fertility treatments - it is about  Cecil B. Jacobson:

A Federal jury today convicted an infertility specialist on 52 counts of fraud and perjury for artificially inseminating unwitting patients with his own sperm and for telling them they were pregnant when they were not.

The doctor, Cecil B. Jacobson, who could be sentenced to up to 280 years in prison and fined up to $500,000, sat impassively with his arms crossed when the jury foreman read the guilty verdicts. Sentencing was set for May 8.

After the trial, jurors said that DNA tests indicating that the doctor had fathered 15 children for his patients had convinced them that he lied about the source of the sperm. The prosecutors charged that Dr. Jacobson may have fathered as many as 75 children.

There are horrible people in the world, and some of them are doctors. It doesn't make what they practice wrong - it makes them wrong.

And as is pointed out at Salon - anti-abortion forces are trying to make access to medically safe abortions illegal. That is inarguably the core of their cause. So using Kermit Gosnell's story as an anti-abortion story is ironic in an unintentionally very ugly way.

Shop That Sold Newtown Guns: "Over 500 Violations"

Imagine being one of the parents of one of those 20 shot and killed children—and reading this:

The document states the agency inspected and found violations at Riverview in 2007, 2009, and 2011.

During the one in 2011, "the licensee committed over 500 violations," ATF documents stated.

I'm So Dumb I...

I'm so dumb I thought the Million Mom March was kind of a big celebration of the previous June.

• This has been another edition of "I'm So Dumb I..." You are welcome.

Rocky Mountain H...

Go. Giants.

Brad Paisley and LL Cool J Explain "Accidental Racist"

Oy to the friggin' weh.

LL Cool J, on the wearing of a Confederatre flag t-shirt:

“(S)ometimes I put a skull and crossbones on and, you know, my wife gets upset with me, but I’m not a pirate.”

There's more. Unfortunately.

 

Here's Ta-Nehisi Coates on this.

And please don't forget my "Live-blogging Listending to "Accidental Racist" Over and Over."

This Post Will Self Destruct in, Well, a While

Regarding this...this:

Update: Cheers, J. Cole!

Update 2: So terrible.

Only "Sodomized" "Religious" "Virgins" Should be Able to Have Abortions

I've just read this (it's a bit over a month old), and have not been able to fully absorb it yet:

During a segment about South Dakota’s bill to ban most abortions, which offers no exceptions for cases of rape or incest unless the pregnant woman’s life is in danger, state Sen. Bill Napoli (R) was asked if he could conceive of a scenario in which the exception might be invoked.

Indeed he could. “A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged,” he said. “The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.”

The depth of hatred for women in that statement is almost impossible to grasp.

[image]

Live-blogging Listening to "Accidental Racist" Over and Over

2:42 PM: Holy crap - the video has been pulled from YouTube. (Even Rolling Stone's is "removed by user." -Wednesday: It's been replaced.) See how long this one lasts. (And it's gone. Here's another, from Rolling Stone.)

And how much you wanna bet they're trying ferociously to un-release the album?

  

9:00 AM: "A proud rebel son, with an old can of worms..."

This song just gave my brain herpes.

Newtown Families: 60 Minutes

A whole new meaning for "must see TV":

25-year-old American Anne Smedinghoff Killed in Afghanistan

Just so tragic:

He said his daughter relished the opportunity to work directly with the Afghan people and that she volunteered to go to Kabul because she felt there was "a lot of good she could do there."

This weekend, the 25-year-old was trying to do just that -- delivering books to a school in southern Afghanistan -- when a suicide bomber smashed into her convoy Saturday. She is believed to be the first U.S. diplomat killed since the September attack in Benghazi, Libya.